#tf meta

[blighted-lights]

slaughterhouse posting part 2 that isn't going to be polished at all and has been sitting in my drafts for days, but this scene is so interesting to me because i genuinely have no idea what megatron wants from ravage in this interaction- and i don't know if megatron knows, either.

megatron starts out by saying that the decepticons' loyalty isn't to him- its to the cause. ignoring how this is immediately striking me as completely, blatently wrong due to the times we see megatron rallying the decepticons around himself when other leaders fail to do the same (nevermind the fact that he started the cause in the first place), he then gets angry with ravage when ravage confirms that- yeah, actually. you're not the cause anymore. we have moved on with someone new. megatron gets so angry he stands up, he looms over ravage, he raises is voice and balls his fist- and why else would he do this if he wasn't upset that they're moving on without him?

which would, of course, make megatron a hypocrite. he left the decepticons and refused to take any effort to rejoin them- he clearly doesn't actually want to return to the fold. but when the decepticons unite themselves and move on from him, it's different. i can abandon you, but you cannot abandon me.

i've always took this reaction as being an immediate, no thinking, gut reaction to finding out the decepticons are moving on without him. he's angry, potentially feeling betrayed by them, when he... doesn't have much of a right to feel that way. and it's not like megatron wasn't given an option to join the decepticons again if that's what he actually wanted.

he was given a choice. he turned it down. he could of turned it down for any number of reasons, but no matter the reason, the point remains that he turned it down.

going back to panel after megatron snaps, ravage clearly takes megatron's outburst as him being upset that they've moved on without him. despite the aggressive way this interaction started with ravage attacking megatron, ravage spends most of this conversation attempting to reassure megatron. megatron gets angry that galvatron took over and they're moving on without him? okay- so then he wants to come back, right? he's upset he's been replaced?

well, galvatron isn't permanent. say the word and you'll be back in charge. megatron says that the decepticons aren't loyal to him, ravage reaffirms that they were loyal to him but now they've chosen a new leader since he left, megatron gets angry that they're moving on without him, and then ravage reinforces their original loyalty to him by saying if he wants to come back, they'll follow him.

and then megatron turns it around; yes he was just angry that the decepticons were no longer loyal to him, but now that same loyalty is toxic, actually. and it is! it absolutely is toxic. but i think ravage backed him into a corner here, even unintentionally. he can't sit down and actually address why the decepticons moving on makes him angry without admitting some part of him wants to return to the cons. or at the very least he still feels possessive of them and doesn't want them to function outside of his influence. when given the option to rejoin, he responds by insulting the decepticon's (and ravage's!) sense of devotion/loyalty and then quickly changes the topic to seawing and the trial. he doesn't say a solid yes or no answer because he doesn't actually have one to give.

ravage nails it down anyways. megatron has no idea what he wants from ravage in this interaction because he doesn't know where he stands anymore, let alone what he wants for himself. before ravage was revealed to be on the lost light, megatron was captain. he even seems content to BE captain- but ravage makes it complicated. ravage is a direct reminder of who he used to be and the people he used to surround himself with. worse, people he's abandoned and hurt in order to get to where he is as captain now. megatron left the decepticons behind with no command structure, no guidance, no plan- and ravage's mere presence is a bitter reminder that even if he's run off to the autobots, he can't escape that.

he's settled into a state of stagmentation with the autobots. one he's content with, maybe- at the very least one he can live with where the guilt isn't as heavy. it is the easiest way out megatron saw for himself.

but if anyone can get him to doubt himself, well.

who else better than ravage to stir up the past?

#blight rambles #blight's meta #transformers #maccadams #maccadam #mtmte #more than meets the eye #transformers idw #idw transformers #idw tf #tf idw1 #transformers idw1 #idw2005 #tf idw #ravage #mtmte ravage #tf ravage #transformers ravage #idw ravage #megatron #idw megatron #mtmte megatron #tf meta #transformers meta #this post is very messy and i debated a lot on posting it bc. idk if it even reads well or if my view on this scene isnt completely biased #because of how much i like ravage #but uh take it anyways. i cannot stop thinking about the slaughterhouse scene #i WISH. i wish their dynamic stayed fucked up. i wish they stayed angry and uncomfortable with each other #i wish ravage having to reassure and comfort megatron while ignoring his own pain was an intentional writing choice and not just #well. what we got in canon. where ravage is megs' support and thats it

[dirtyreusablehandkerchief]

so i had a thought this evening

#transformers #maccadam #maccadams #meta #analysis #fandom meta #transformers meta #TF meta #transformers analysis #TF analysis #fandom analysis

[polygonal-trees]

A Tepid Defense of the EarthSpark Season One Ending

So, plenty of people consider the season one ending to be very anticlimactic - a thrilling final struggle that amounts to nothing when all the destruction gets healed by alien space magic.

And I don't disagree with this assessment, broadly I feel the same way, but I do think it might be a very adult way of looking at the show.

Bear with me while I compare it to Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

I was about five or six when I first saw Snow White, and I still remember the emotional impact the finale had on me - the 'death' of Snow White, the frantic and thrilling chase through the forest, the very real death of the evil queen, and of course, the absolutely heartbreaking funeral.

Even as a kid who'd already heard the original fairytale and knew how it ended, it was a lot.

So when the Prince showed up at the end and healed Snow White with dubiously consensual fairytale magic, it wasn't an anticlimax - it was a relief. I wasn't thinking about how pointless the previous scenes had been, I was just happy that Snow White was alive.

And in my opinion, the EarthSpark finale follows very similar beats - the chase/fight, the funeral/mourning moment, the magic kiss/Emberstone.

They are not the same, of course, and I don't think EarthSpark did it very well (I mean for one thing at least Snow White foreshadowed the life saving kiss) but

EarthSpark can be intense for a children's show, and happy endings are required to balance that. Alien space magic isn't a great solution, and I think the shift in tone was too abrupt, but I think most kids watching the finale would feel the same sequence of emotions I felt watching Snow White - anxiety and excitement, sadness and despair, joy and relief. Not disappointment. So while I don't love the final scene, I think it works in context.

#transformers earthspark #long post #tf meta #earthspark spoilers #kinda

[crissiti]

The reason why im so obsessed with tf animated rn is because when it comes to stories about wars something inside of me cringes when one side is represented as the “bad” guys and the other as the “good” guys. Because I don’t believe there can be good guys in the context of war. But most tf shows go with this dichotomy with the lore of the shows supporting it. In transformers animated however the Autobots are shown to have flaws. They are still the “good” guys of the show but they are also very prejudiced and xenophobic and we see some shady stuff going on on the inside that make us question if they are actually that good. And I love that. I love the nuance, and I love the ambiguity of it. Because it allows us fans space to analyse and come up with our own conclusions or headcanons.

#maccadam #transformers #transformers animated #tfa #tf meta #oh look i made a post

[cleverthylacine]

Watching Transformers Victory because I've had a long day...

Then suddenly I realise this show is set in the year 2025...

(well, in 1989 that did seem really far off in the future).

It's especially funny because their view of year-2025 Earth is so ... rural and old-fashioned, even for Japan.

Honestly, if I were in charge of a school and my new transfer student's Autobot friends attracted Decepticons to the school and then had a brawl on the school grounds I'd have been a lot more annoyed than that nun was. I don't know wtf Star Saber and Holi were smoking that made them think it was a good idea to hang around outside of a school. This was made in Japan, where even nowadays kids are allowed to walk to school by themselves.

#tf meta #maccadam #tf victory

[quietbluejay]

Giant Enemy Crabs: A Last Stand of the Wreckers Critique, Part 1/??

Finally had the energy and inspiration to actually finish this last night. This isn't a LSOTW hate post, I just found some elements to be frustrating. The "???" in the title is because I'm not even sure if I'll write the other part of this later or not.

Last Stand of the Wreckers is a powerful story that peels back the colourful veneer to reveal the bleakness and horror of war.  It contrasts the Wreckers Declassified stories full of snappy one-liners, noble sacrifices, and camaraderie where good triumphs over evil with the reality of a dysfunctional unit regularly sent on suicide missions, full of “incredibly stupid deaths”, and with many (if not most) members either complicit or actively participating in war crimes.  However, one of the ways in which it falls short is the uncritical treatment of the enemy as a solid mass of evil.

One of the most common elements in propaganda (and simplistic adventure stories) is to paint a situation as black and white, the enemy as complete evil.  Tolkien’s Orcs are a prime example of this, though even Tolkien later expressed conflicted feelings about the implications.  Therefore, it is disappointing to see that despite the comic dismantling other cliches, the antagonistic forces in Last Stand of the Wreckers have about as much depth and nuance as a sheet of black construction paper.  The panel with the terrified faces of Squadron X as Impactor prepares to murder them, and the reveal in supplementary material that they were on a supply run, would seem to point in a different direction - “humanizing” them (for lack of a better term).  However, for the vast majority of the story, and most especially when it comes to the actual assault on Garrus-9, the Decepticons are treated like a horde of freshly spawned video game opponents complete with gruesomely evil final villain at the end, rather than as actual people.

As deprivation and atrocities continue for the three years Overlord is in charge of Garrus-9, there is no mass desertion - no desertion of any kind, no attempt at communication with the outside, no sabotage of the defence grid, no alliances between Decepticons and Autobot prisoners - nothing.  It is a mark of Overlord’s evil that he treats the soldiers under his command in such a way.  All the Decepticons are trapped inside of a no-win situation from which there is no escape.  And yet, it appears to have no effect on them in general.

From the moment the Wreckers arrive on Garrus-9, the entire Decepticon force present acts as one, following his orders (and swarming the descending Wreckers at a truly impressive speed given there was no warning).  They resemble more accurately the enemies in a Dungeons&Dragons dungeon crawl, their only goal is to defeat the Wreckers - why?  Overlord later orders all of the Autobot prisoners executed, this is done at once again a truly dizzying speed.  The Decepticons hound the Wreckers through the prison, for some reason relying on Overlord’s word of freedom to whoever catches one, despite three years of the reward for successfully following Overlord’s orders being…brutal death.

There is one exception to this - Snare, the only one of the Decepticons present to have any agency.  Snare’s actions are pivotal in allowing Impactor to escape and thus warn the approaching Wreckers.  The thing about Snare is that his death means that the Wreckers don’t have to grapple with the idea of the redemption of an enemy, or the question of what to do with him at all. It’s nice, it’s tidy, it ties things up, we can move along, having neatly disposed of him.

With the talk of character agency, I would like to be clear here - I don’t think that background characters all need agency or to all have strong distinct personalities, etc, especially given the limited amount of space there is to tell a story inside a comic miniseries.  (And we do in fact get a few scenes of Decepticon characters that flesh them out a little, in the time before the Wreckers land on Garrus-9.)  But it’s not a binary between every single background character having agency and a character arc, and a group that could be replaced by remote controlled giant enemy crabs.  Or, perhaps, a more relevant comparison would be the bad guys in a kids TV show, just with the violence and gore dial turned up to R.  Last Stand of the Wreckers is not interested in adding realism into its antagonists.

#tf meta #lsotw #maccadam

[mrfandomwars]

Reasons Why I Think IDW2 Sentinel Prime Was A Still Technically A Young Prime/New First Senator By The Time We Meet Him - a mini meta

We are told that Nominus not only oversaw the final push against Exarchon - which happened like, 2000 years Before canon events - but also that he was the one who was in charge when Bumblebee and Cliffjumper were built - and Iacon was already rebuilt by that point, or at least mostly rebuilt from what we could see

2000 years to a species who can live up to millions, at very least, is like. Not a lot. At most a month or a year, something like that; Meaning that Sentinel could have only become a Prime at least 500 years after the War of the Threefold Spark ended, and that is if we are being generous with how quickly the Constructicon's finished Iacon and of Bumblebee and Cliffjumper's age.

So like. Sentinel, although he probably had been trained to take up the mantel of Prime by Nominus, was probably a young Prime by the time we met him

At most, he was like. A newly elected president who may not have yet fully completed a year on the job (maybe even less, enough to settle in with a new president but to still be considered a New President), because even though a lot of time passed to us for Transformers, it isn't, again, a lot comparatively to their life spans.

Also also: what better time to try and start a revolution/civil unrest? with a new leader that people are getting used to and is currently away.

#transformers #tf idw 2 #tfidw2 #tf idw2 #tf #sentinel prime #idw2 transformers #idw2 sentinel prime #nominus prime #bumblebee #cliffjumper #tf meta #transformers meta #my thoughts are still messy on a possible issue #that is that maybe Megatron started pushing forward to have that unrest not because it was time #but because he lost the first Senator election months/kilocyles before #and he waited until he had enough people to cause some real damage #again #my thoughts are still messy on this possibility so I shan't speak about it

[ramtiger]

mini-meta: it would not be sorted

i don’t think in the “afterspark” on mederi that cdrw were ever in danger of “ascending” with the illusions of rewind 1 and dominus

did they each get to see who they wanted? yes

but rewind 2 (for lack of something better to call him) has to also face the concept that chromedome didn’t want him, not technically, he wanted the other him, the one he was but wasn’t. that rewind 2 wasn’t really good enough. and why? they’re the same. just one of them is dead and one has immense trauma. except, he guesses, now they’re both dead

and chromedome has to face dominus

like. first of all, the one and only time he ever saw this man was when he was killing himself to give rewind dominus back. and instead just killed dominus like an animal

and secondly

chromedome now has concrete proof (to his mind) that rewind still wanted dominus. couldn’t live or die without him. even waiting for CD in the afterspark he couldn’t resist getting cozy with his ex. did rewind even still love him now? would they both abandon him for someone nobler, more tortured, more skilled and smarter? made worse by the fact that dominus is being so nice to him, cozying up to him. asking if he can sit in chromedome’s lap while the rewinds catch up

it’s a shaky polycule. the afterspark tries to make it perfect, but chromedome and rewind weren’t happy or comfortable with the arrangement. just accepted that it had to happen. nice as it would be for everything to turn out well with the missing pieces added, i think it would all fall apart, and i think they know it.

#chromedome #tf rewind #mtmte #lost light #tf meta #maccadam #my posts #tf

[1tbls]

thought i would share this really good reddit meta post about tiago, alcoholics anonymous, addiction, and obsession..... [source]

#disco elysium #de tag #also. more food for my ocd harry hc. #came across this meta once bc i was like ''why tf does tiago offer you coffee'' lol #there is probably a better way to screenshot these but it's 5:30am and i dont care

[blighted-lights]

as much as i joke about it, i do think that it is strange that ravage was simply allowed to remain on the lost light with zero restrictions or repercussions. ravage is an active decepticon who was spying on the crew for an extended period of time before forcibly being revealed. he is an active decepticon with the order to kill megatron, and he attacked megatron during the split lost light arc.

and then right when he appeared, they find a ship full of dead autobots, brainstorm is revealed to be a decepticon, and the universe almost crashes down around itself. ravage was not responsible for any of these events, but the timing of it is awful. you're telling me that the crew just passively accepted the fact that there is a "bad batch" of energon at swerves that knocks out everyone the instant they return to the lost light and ravage joins the crew? remember that the crew doesn't know the truth about brainstorm's timecase shenanigans. they believe that it's a bad engex batch at swerves that poisoned them. it would of been incredibly easy for people to point fingers at ravage.

it's just. so many events happen back to back and there is no suspicion on him? like. he Isn't Responsible. he isn't. but i feel like there should of been at least some sort of pushback from the crew. if they're upset with having megatron on their crew, then surely they'd also he upset that ravage was not only allowed to remain, but invited.

like im just! it's weird. it's weird to me.

#transformers #maccadams #maccadam #mtmte #more than meets the eye #lost light #idw tf #tf idw1 #idw2005 #blight rambles #tf meta #transformers meta #kinda?? #ravage #idw ravage #tf ravage #like he wasnt even locked up for a short period? his weapons weren't confiscated? he wasnt interrogated or anything? #like it is extremely likely that megatron pardoned ravage or vouched for him but like. is that really enough for the crew? for magnus? #it wouldnt of been deserved in the end- ravage is innocent of all except spying and attacking megatron #but to allow ravage full reign of the lost light with no precautions even if they are just an attempt by megatron to appease the crew #it just feels odd to me #count how many times blight says “like” lol

[thesherrinfordfacility]

just fucking give michael an oscar already fucking GOD make him STOP

#i know i responded to a meta with these exact images already #but they need their own post because DEAR LORD #the man is a micro-expression connoisseur and i EAT IT TF UP #good omens #michael sheen #he and florence pugh just need to be in something together where they make these faces at each other

[dunkinbublin]

i drew something last night hooray

#sth #sonic the hedgehog #uhhhh do i gotta tag all these mooks #meta sonic #blaze the car #car? #tf #blaze the cat #pseudo sonic #chip the light gaia #kitsunami the fennec #espio the chameleon #barry the quokka #im so tired school picked up and p3 reload dropped at the same time #no drawing left in me after that shit #dunkinsart

[polygonal-trees]

you know when in fics characters give threats that are like "if you misbehave I'll reformat you into a toaster"?

I think it's funny but also I can't help thinking stuff like that would be hugely problematic in universes where functionism exists lol

like, it's basically saying a some alt modes are so terrible they should be used as punishments. it's calling some alt modes so much better than others. what would a toaster-former think of that? 😂

#ratchet gets cancelled on autobot twitter because he said he'd turn Sunstreaker into a vending machine #beeping #tf meta

[heavenpierceher]

something so funny about these panels that literally never leaves my head. optimus being like hello here is my pet War Crimes look he can do Lobotomy Tricks and cd who just got dragged out of his Dead Wife Cave to be here standing there slumped over consumed with Wife Depression just kinda letting optimus pick him up by the shoulders and carry him around like a prop. he doesn’t say a single word for the entire exchange. doesn’t even react to megatron freaking out he’s just like Otay :( and then leaves also without saying anything. obsessed

#maccadam #issue 28 is so underrated so many good bits in there #mtmte #tf #cd #meta #op

[cleverthylacine]

Would it be possible for Glit to act as a mental health therapist (like Rung), in addition to being a trauma surgeon?

I don't know. Glit is not exactly a shining example of mental health. I know some therapists aren't, but he is a very poor example for a mental patient. Honestly nobody that was in KP is in good mental health or even would recognise what that is, even in the actually good and plotty parts of the series.

If you're talking about Tumblr RPs and my @doctor-glitterbomb account or the @doccat DW account, I'd be willing to do it for shiggles (that account also has a Glit in it who is a cityspeaker and conjunx to/speaker for Fort Max) but I wouldn't write Glit into a fic as a therapist--particularly not in my Voice of Stanix series. It's definitely in the category of "things I'd be willing to let slide to help an RP move along but things that could throw me right out of a fic unless it's AU or Shattered Glass."

Glit is a serious alcoholic (except it's not alcohol, it's engex--but you know what I mean). In Kiss Players he was drunk almost every time we saw him.

In IDW verse he was forced to serve at Grindcore where they did all the really bad war crimes and that provides an explanation for his fucked up mental health that is even more compelling than just 'had issues with Megatron and got beat up a lot'.

Now, in the thing @bitegore started on AO3 that I added more to about the RavWaves in Rodion, Glit could be a therapist, but that's an extreme AU in which Glit is the natural offspring of Ravage and Soundwave and was born in Rodion. Ravage and Soundwave had no idea that spark merging causes babies and Ravi was concerned that she was getting a tumour or something. Soundwave told her there was another mind in there and she didn't know what to think because point: SW doesn't lie to her but counterpart: that is so fucking crazy! Which is how he ended up getting born on a worksite and then Shenanigans Ensued.

There is no cougaraider/Predacon hybrid breeding project in that AU and as a result of it, all of the cougaraiders are 80000% less mentally damaged. Glit in particular was raised by Ravage as his carrier and encouraged to defend himself but also to pursue his interests, meaning that he was around Ratchet practically since emergence. And as they were never slaves--not to Ratbat, not to Pharma--Glit grew up with his mama encouraging him to bite when necessary and also has much better self-preservation instincts.

#Glit #TF Meta #Voice of Stanix #my fic #IDW meta #KP meta

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain #so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash #i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent #what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving #is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt #and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists #so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character #so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of #'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him' #but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid #and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like #the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of #being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths #then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part #and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts #and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine #this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer #and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like #how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil #and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit #like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma #but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel #and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple #bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed #but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal